How do you know which roles are going to help your startup grow? And more importantly, even if you did know the roles, how can you tell who’d be a great fit for each one?
When productivity starts to slip, it’s easy to default back to hiring more developers or salespeople. But that approach isn’t scalable once things really take off. A recent Fast Company article argued that the No. 1 reason why startups fail is because the team isn’t right. Instead of getting more of the same on your team, put together a group that builds on each other’s strengths and covers each other’s weaknesses.
With that in mind, here are three roles critical to success, and characteristics of successful people in each role, based on our data.
As the visionary behind the company, you’ve probably been doing a cross between marketing and sales. More often than not, sales takes priority when it comes to hiring additional full-timers, but marketing is a vital piece of the puzzle. Sales needs to focus on closing leads, and marketing should be focused on generating them. Ania Markowska from ADLIB says that marketing is so important, there should be a dedicated marketing person on the team from Day 1. But even if that day has passed, it’s never too late to bring someone on board and leap ahead.
What a successful candidate looks like:
To quote Jason Lemkin in a Forbes article, “customer success is where 90 percent of the revenue is.” That’s a good chunk of revenue. Plus, customer advocacy is one of the best sales tools — who better to vouch for your product or service than someone who loves it? To get to a point of customer advocacy, you need someone dedicated to making it happen.
What a successful candidate looks like:
This is where a lot of startups really drop the ball. It can sometimes seem like a startup’s low staff number negates the need for someone in an HR position. But Christopher Janz at Point Nine Capital writes that if your company plans on hiring 10 or more people within a 12-month window, it’s time to bring an HR full-timer on board. Jasmine Ramratan wrote a powerful piece in Hackernoon on the importance of HR for startups, and emphasizes the idea that HR can be a driving force behind growing a company effectively. Clearly, many startups need HR much sooner than they think.
What a successful candidate looks like:
A big piece of the hiring puzzle is knowing what you’re looking for. It might be tempting to just look for additional developers or salespeople, but there are other roles that are vital to the health of your startup. Take a critical look at where your company needs additional resources. You might be surprised to find that the underlying solution involves one of these often overlooked roles. Good luck on your next hire!
